White House purges transcripts of Trump's remarks from its website
WASHINGTON — The White House has removed official transcripts of President Donald Trump's public remarks from its government website, replacing them with selected videos of his public appearances.
As recently as Sunday, transcripts of Trump's speeches and comments were still showing up in the 'Remarks' section of WhiteHouse.gov. The next day, they were gone, snapshots of the site from an internet archive show. The only transcript appearing now is of Trump's inaugural address on Jan. 20.
Government stenographers are still recording and transcribing Trump's remarks, a White House official said. But in an internal policy change in recent days, the White House took down the transcripts in favor of audio and video of his appearances.
The idea behind the move is that people will get a fuller and more accurate sense of Trump by watching and listening to him as opposed to reading a transcript, which they may not be inclined to do anyway, the official said. Purging the transcripts and switching to audio and video of Trump's remarks was intended to create "consistency" across the website, the official said.
'In an effort to maintain consistency, previous transcripts that were available have been removed and replaced with the audio and visual components of that transcript,' the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'The White House continues to work to upload the multitude of public engagements that the president has done and will continue to make sure that the website consists of a full and complete representation of the president's public comments.'
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: 'The president's remarks are live on the website for every person in the world, including journalists, to access and watch for themselves. The Trump White House is the most transparent in history.'
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance's office continues to make public transcripts of his remarks, sending them out to the media. Since last month, Vance's office has shared eight transcripts with reporters, including his comments at a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a speech he gave about U.S. manufacturing and another one that involved the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Asked why Vance is putting out official transcripts while Trump is not, Vance's office declined to comment.
Historians and former White House officials denounced the move to do away with public transcripts that have long served as the definitive record of what the president says in public.
"I hope he and his communications team see the light on this,' said Barbara Perry, a co-chair of the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
'It's not only good for history, which they may not care about, but they do care about how he's viewed by history. And second, they should also realize that it is his very communication style and substance that won him the presidency twice.'
A public transcript also provides some protection for Trump if he feels misquoted or misunderstood. He can point to the document to settle the issue.
Transcripts coming out of the White House have at times become points of contention. Days before the 2024 election, President Joe Biden made a comment that seemed to disparage Trump voters.
A comedian speaking at a Trump rally had referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage."
Speaking to a Latino audience, Biden said, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters." That comment had the potential to alienate millions of voters on the eve of the election and potentially harm Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' chances.
The Biden press office, however, altered the stenographer's transcript and instead released a document that changed the meaning of his remarks, adding an apostrophe so that the quote read "supporter's" — an apparent reference to the comedian who had made the remark, according to The Associated Press.
President Barack Obama once mistakenly used the word "abortion" in an interview when he meant to say, "aberration," said Beck Dorey-Stein, who was a White House stenographer during his presidency and in the first couple of months of Trump's last term. Obama aides flagged Obama's bit of misspeak, but the transcript was allowed to stand, Dorey-Stein said.
In another transcript kerfuffle, in 2007, President George W. Bush talked about how "childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured." The official transcript, however, changed the word to "children." The White House insisted it had not asked for the edit and had it changed back to Bush's actual words.
Withholding transcripts 'seems really irresponsible and a self-inflicted wound,' Dorey-Stein said. 'With a transcript he can say, 'This is exactly what I said.''
'How many times in the press briefing room would someone say, 'President Obama said this,' and the press secretary would say, 'No, he didn't. Check the transcript'? Now, there's no way for anyone to check the transcript,' she added.
Others questioned the rationale the White House official put forward. The real motivation may be that Trump's frequent digressions — which he calls 'the weave' — can come off as gibberish in written form, critics said.
Perhaps the White House 'didn't want 'the weave' exposed,' said Mike McCurry, a press secretary in Bill Clinton's White House.
The last presidential event that the White House transcribed and made public happened more than two months ago — an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Though some videos of Trump's appearances are available on the White House's website, many are not.
The site shows 10 videos in April, including events with Ohio State University's football team, the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, the Philadelphia Eagles football team and the Italian and Norwegian prime ministers.
Not shown are videos of more than two dozen events Trump participated in last month. Among them is an Oval Office meeting on April 14 with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who is accepting migrants deported from the United States and putting them in a maximum-security prison. In the meeting, Trump said he wanted Bukele to take in as many criminals 'as possible.'
Also missing are videos of Trump's various interactions with the media. There is no record, for example, of a Q&A with reporters on April 17 covering issues involving a school shooting at Florida State University ('The gun doesn't do the shooting; the people do,' he said) and Harvard University's tax-exempt status ('I think Harvard is a disgrace. They're obviously antisemitic.").
This month, the White House website has posted 11 videos of Trump's appearances. That accounts for less than half of the Q&A sessions with the media and other events Trump has participated in so far.
The left-out events include a meeting with Canada's new prime minister, Mark Carney, who batted down Trump's interest in making Canada the 51st state.
'Canada won't be for sale, ever,' Carney said.
Past White Houses routinely publicized the official transcripts of the president's remarks. Indeed, in the first four months of Trump's first term, the White House posted more than 100 transcripts of his remarks. By contrast, in Trump's new term, his White House posted only 30 before they disappeared.
Dorey-Stein said that in her brief stint at the start of Trump's first term, the new president's aides were wary of the stenographer corps. A former press officer said that the stenographers were positioning their microphones too close to Trump's face and that he did not like it, Dorey-Stein recalled.
'At the time, there was an overwhelming feeling of distrust,' she said in an interview. 'They really felt we were an extension of the press rather than a safeguard.'
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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